By CatholicVote | Created at 2025-01-24 17:01:03 | Updated at 2025-01-24 23:18:14
6 hours ago
CV NEWS FEED // Bishop David Thomas, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Pro-Life Commitee, called the Senate’s blocking of the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Act “a stunning failure.”
The USCCB released a statement Jan. 23, the same day that the House of Representatives passed the bill and the Senate blocked it. The act requires doctors to treat infants who survive abortion attempts the same way they would treat any other baby born at the same gestational age.
“The House of Representatives took decisive action to protect innocent babies from infanticide,” Bishop Thomas said. “Babies are being left to die after failed abortions – denied care and basic human compassion. It is a stunning failure of the Senate to reject this necessary, common-sense legislation – which, in reality, does not even limit abortion but protects infants who are born alive.”
The USCCB’s statement added, “Currently, denying these infants care and leaving them alone to die – unlike a direct action of killing – is often not adequately covered by state laws, leaving a critical gap in needed protection.”
Bishop Thomas also sent a letter to the House and Senate Jan. 21, urging them to pass the legislation.
“Ensuring medical care for infants who are born alive upon an attempted abortion is a proposition on which the American people and their representatives, regardless of their otherwise passionately divided views, should be able to agree for the sake of protecting lives,” the Bishop wrote.
He added that according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), from 2003 to 2014, 143 babies born alive after an abortion attempt died. The CDC also stated that this figure may be an underestimate.
He also stated that these deaths are not punishable by many state’s homicide laws.
He noted that the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Act “is both a necessary and a logical step more than twenty years after the bipartisan passage of the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act recognized the legal personhood of those born alive following an attempted abortion.”
“It is time for Congress to move beyond treating born-alive children like part of the debate over abortion,” the Bishop continued, “and to come together again to simply yet critically affirm that every fellow human being has equal dignity and value, worthy of protection from harm, and undimmed by the circumstances of their birth.”
